Education: Day for Don Miguel

Miguel de Unamuno, a brilliant man with flashing eyes who wrote novels, plays and poems, was long considered, with Ortega y Gasset, Spain’s most influential philosopher. In 1901 he became rector of the nation’s oldest university, and under him, Salamanca began to recapture some of the glory it had known in the days of Students Cervantes, Cortes and Ignatius of Loyola. This year, when Salamanca began laying plans to celebrate its 700th anniversary, it naturally included a solemn tribute to its great rector.

Deserve to Be Immortal. In his 72 years of life (he died in 1936), Miguel de Unamuno was forever in trouble. A fiery liberal, he was once exiled by Primo de Rivera, accused Alfonso XIII of being “unfit” to govern, attacked the republic and the rebels in turn, was finally dismissed by Franco. Though passionately religious, he could find no proof in logic for the immortality of the soul, felt that the only thing man could do was to “spend your life so that you deserve to be immortal.” To some segments of official Spain, Unamuno was a heretic.

Last week, just before Salamanca’s celebration was to begin, a pamphlet appeared in the streets called “Miguel de Unamuno: Greatest Heretic and Teacher of Heresy!” Among other things, it quoted Antonio Pildáin y Zapiáin, Bishop of the Canary Islands, who attacked the philosopher as an “enemy of the religious faith common to all Spaniards.” It also quoted a 1942 decree in which the then Bishop of Salamanca listed the books of Unamuno that were on the Index. In a sudden panic, the university changed the name of the Unamuno house, which was to be opened as a museum, to the Casa Rectoral. It canceled plans to visit Unamuno’s grave, rescinded invitations to his relatives, barred the mention of his name in the program. Then university officials sat back to await the arrival of visitors.

Live Forever. The visitors came from universities all over the world. There was Oxford’s red, Hamburg’s blue, Padua’s ermine, the Sorbonne’s yellow, white tie and tails from Harvard and Princeton. In the face of such a gathering, Salamanca should have been pleased—except for the irrepressible ghost of Miguel de Unamuno.

The visitors seemed determined to pay him tribute. They queued up hour after hour to visit his house, decked his bust with flowers, trudged through rain and mud to place wreaths on his tomb. Finally they gathered in the great Ceremonial Hall, and as each one rose to congratulate the university, the forbidden name seemed to pop up, again and again and again. At the end of the ceremony, Rector Pedro Lain Entralgo of the University of Madrid launched into an impassioned eulogy of “one of the Spanish masters who will live forever, long after many generations have died.”

The Bishop of Salamanca frowned and lowered his head. But the cheers burst out, and for long moments applause thundered through the hall. Don Miguel had had his day, after all.